No Soldier
by thejokettee
Summary: She doesn't understand what the word war means or that her older brother is a soldier, but she feels like something bad is on the horizon. It isn't until many years later that she realizes that she was fighting an entirely different war, and in this war she was the soldier.
1. Chapter 1

(I may or may not continue this depending on the type of feedback I get.)

There was blood caked beneath her fingernails and dried along her arms that flaked off and fell in a pool around her when she bent her elbows. Despite the frigid temperatures of the tail section she had tugged off her coat and shirt leaving her in nothing but a tattered tank top. Her hands were shaking and there was blood around her ears from where she had tried to silence the cries of a mother and failed. There was little to no medical care provided for any of them and newborns weren't an exception. Less than an hour after delivering a baby boy, a responsibility that she had never asked for but had forced upon her, the child had died. Maybe it was because the baby was doomed from the moment of conception or perhaps the fact that they didn't have any food to feed him. Maybe it was the cold.

None of that mattered, though. His life was in her hands and Nora had failed to save him.

With each baby she delivered she took what happened to them during their first year being aboard the train personally. The majority of the babies she delivered had survived but each time one died she completely shut down. Resting her head against the cool steel wall she tried to force herself to be relaxed by the steady rocking of the train but found that it only sent her spiraling into madness.

It didn't go unnoticed by the other passengers. None of them had been afforded any privacy since boarding the train and while the young woman, barely a day over twenty three, was curled up in a space that was out of the way she still wasn't free of prying eyes. Everyone kept their distance because there were some sorrows that had to be dealt with alone. The tail section was a cruel place and little things reminded its passengers of it everyday that passed.

"You go talk to her," Tanya said in a hushed voice. She had passed by Nora several times and worried her lower lip each time she did. There were very few people who she allowed anywhere near her when a baby she had delivered died, and even then it was a sick game of Russian Roulette because there was a chance that she might snap on any of them who tried to reach out to her. Looking between Curtis and Edgar, the two closest to her other than herself and Grey, she stood with a concerned yet somewhat frightening expression on her features. Tanya might have not been her biological mother but ever since she lost her brother she had taken the blue-eyed beauty under her wing and treated her as her own.

"Are ya fuckin' crazy?" Edgar shoot back. People around them were casting them strange glances as if the same thing he had just asked was on all of their minds. "The last time someone tried to talk to her when this happened she completely lost her sh-" he cut himself off midsentence when Curtis shot him a warning glance. Nora had been through a lot and it was evident by the scar on her face spanning from her cheekbone to her jaw and the way her left foot dragged behind her as she walked. She was stronger than what she gave herself credit for and had to be in order to have survived the Snowpiercer for seventeen years, but even she had her breaking point. It was never a pretty sight when she reached it.

Curtis scratched at his scalp through the material of his beanie while setting his jaw. He understood the kind of pressure put on her by having someone else's life in her hands; he knew because the _entire_ fucking tail section was putting their faith in him to lead a revolution when all others had failed. "I'll talk to her." he finally decided. Each time _this_ happened it seemed to take a little more away from the woman. Even after what had happened to her all those years ago she still laughed and shyly smiled at him when their fingers brushed together or blushed at something Edgar had murmured against her ear. After the first time a baby she delivered didn't make it she seemed much older both in her eyes and the way she carried herself. Nora laughed a little less after that and didn't get as flustered by whatever his second in command would tell her. Her attitude changed even towards him.

Tanya nodded in approval before grabbing onto Edgar's arm and tugging him towards the section of bunks where she and her son slept. "I need your help with Timmy," she lied without casting a glance over her shoulder. The last thing any of them needed was for Edgar to start running his mouth - something he seemed to do at the most inconvenient times - and make matters worse.

Curtis drew in a deep breath before slowly approaching Nora. Other passengers moved out of his way and gave them what space they could as he crouched down in front of her. He wasn't the best at comforting someone because he was so cut and dry, but he was willing to try and put forth the effort. "Hey," his voice was soft and hesitantly he lifted his hand to brush a lock of dirty hair away from her face. Blue eyes peeked up at him at the contact but she didn't pull away. That was a good sign.

Nora blinked at Curtis slowly while he picked up her blood-stained shirt and stared down at it for a moment. "You need to get this back on," he told her while holding it out to her. Rather than slipping the worn material back on she simply snatched it from his hand and held it to her chest, curling her knees inwards. A silence fell between them that seemed to stretch on for an entirety. Time didn't matter any more and hadn't for quite awhile.

"Why don't they just let us die?" she asked him quietly. Her body was trembling from the cold but she didn't feel it. The gears in her mind were churning and she didn't understand why Wilford even bothered keeping them alive when they were dehumanized and treated worse than shit. A fire was burning inside of her that was ready to consume every fiber of her being. Something _had_ to give.

Curtis pursed his lips together at her statement and took her tattered coat into his calloused hands - laying it over his arm before taking her wrist and gently tugging her to her feet. Draping the coat around her shoulders he stood stock still for a moment because he didn't know how to respond. There wasn't a good answer because it was the same question he asked himself almost every day.

Finally, he wrapped his arm around her shoulders and guided her in the diction of the bathroom where a cracked sink with dirty water could be found.

"Let's get you cleaned up."


	2. Chapter 2

Nora carefully stepped over upturned barrels and pressed closer into Curtis' side as he guided her towards the bathroom. Like everyone else in the tail she did what she could to avoid spending a vast amount of time in there. The toilet had stopped working fourteen years in but there were _much_ nastier ways of getting the waste to go down. The smell was repulsing and the water that ran out of the stained sink reminded her of muddy pond water that Constantine, her brother, had always told her never to drink. Blinking those thoughts away she and Curtis stepped into the cramped area and almost immediately both of their faces screwed up as they were greeted by the stench.

"You don't need to do this," she murmured when she finally found her voice. Curtis had turned the sink on and was rolling the sleeves of her coat up like she was a child who couldn't do for herself. Nora knew what happened to her each time a child passed and she _hated_ it because she didn't have the time to mourn. She had to be strong and she needed to be ready in case someone needed her. It was a joke to call herself the doctor of the tail section because she wasn't the most knowledgeable one when it came to medicine but she could stitch a wound and reset bones. Constantine had taught her whatever valuable skills he could because if they ever ran out of food again... well, she would be the least likely to be eaten. As each day passed more and more skills went extinct and it made her a necessity to the other passengers.

Curtis smiled smugly in reply. Running his hands underneath the water to wet them he gently took her by the wrist and held her hands under the water. Her skin was much softer in comparison to his own and he did his best not to focus on the blood that trickled down the drain as he scrubbed at her pale skin with calloused fingertips. "You're right," he agreed as he began working his way up her arms. It had been seventeen years since he had been so close to a woman and while he struggled to remember (because of how often he tried to forget) what life was like when the world had been green he knew that she was malnourished. Her arms felt incredibly small and frail in his large hands and it wasn't just because of their general difference in size. If he lifted her shirt up he knew he would find her ribs poking out from beneath her skin and sharp hipbones jutting out. Clearing his throat slightly he turned moved his attention to her other arm, "I don't have to do this. That doesn't mean that I shouldn't or that I don't want to."

It was rare that he showed a softer side of himself. Edgar knew him more personally than even Gilliam being his closet friend and faithful second in command, but the dark-haired female had always been a weakness for him. Truthfully he hadn't noticed her until she was thirteen or so because of what happened and from then on he had watched her struggle and grow into the fierce young woman that she was now. His jaw tightened slightly at the thought but he was pulled back to the current moment when Nora shifted, tugging her hands free of his grasp.

"I think you're going soft," she teased weakly. Curtis helped her to forget about the hardships of the train and while the sense of failure lingered in the pit of her stomach she pushed it down. The sooner she was back to 'normal', the better off she and everyone else would be. "You're supposed to be leading a revolution and here you are giving me a bath. If you keep it up then we might have to turn things over to Edgar," there was a pause and a small smile formed on her thin lips while looking up at the man. "Which is a really bad idea because we'd all die if he headed anything other then my list of people to strangle."

Curtis couldn't help to laugh in response. It was chuckle that came from deep within his chest and caused his face to ache after a few moments of smiling too long. Laughter from the tail passengers rarely came from anyone other than the children who were too young to comprehend the Hell they were living in. "Oh yeah?" he asked her while taking a step closer to her so that they were chest-to-chest. His laughter died down as her smile slowly fell and her features relaxed, leaving the two of them gazing at one another in easy silence. "I think you're being a brat. Didn't anyone tell you that if you didn't have anything nice to say then don't say anything at all?" it almost felt wrong to be playful. After everything he had done he honestly believed that he shouldn't feel anything other than regret and the pressures of carrying the weight of the revolt on his shoulders.

Nora's eyes fell for a moment before she lifted her hand and cupped Curtis' cheek. It was a strangely intimate gesture but as her thumb lightly stroked over his cheekbone it felt like the natural thing for her to do. After spending so much time with him she had learned to read him, and while his emotions rarely showed on his features she could see it in his eyes. They looked like they should belong to someone who had lived a full life instead of being in what her mother had once told her was 'their prime'. Leaning up on the tips of her toes she pressed a chaste kiss against his jaw as a comforting gesture before taking a step back. "I think somebody did, actually. It was in another life, though." she shrugged slightly while lifting her hand to scratch at her face. When she pulled it away flakes of blood were sticking to her fingertips.

Her kiss had nearly made him lean into her touch. Despite the difference in their ages and everything that may have been stacked against them there was something he felt towards her that was stronger than the hunger that often kept him awake and the anger that coursed through him at every waking moment. In the beginning he had tried to put it off as desire because shortly after boarding many of their women had been drafted to the front of the train or taken to different cars. Only a few had been left for the purpose of child birth. Curtis tried to burn through the desire by sticky foundlings and quick fucks shared with other male passengers who were looking for release (only a handful of men in the tail were actually homosexual, but they respected their women and if they refused them then they didn't force themselves upon her. It left the males to their own devices, or in many cases other men). When the burning for Nora was still present he couldn't lie to himself any longer by saying it was lust. He cared about her far more than he had anyone before.

He watched as she scratched at her face, then, and cocked an eyebrow. "Want some help with that, Reaver?" he asked, referring to her by her last name. There wasn't a mirror so she would end up having to guess as to where the blood on her face was if she wanted to do it herself.

Nora responded by rolling her eyes and gathering her hair in her hands and pulling it back and out of the way for easier access. "I think I need more than just help with my face," she said underneath her breath as Curtis took her shirt (she had laid tucked it into her coat pocket prior to stepping into the bathroom) and balled the hem up before running it beneath the facet.

"What was that?"

"More face washing. Less talking."


End file.
